In spite of the difficulty of predicting the future and that unforeseen technological inventions can completely upset the most careful predictions, you must try to foresee the future you will face. To illustrate the importance of this point of trying to foresee the future I often use a standard story.
It is well known the drunken sailor who staggers to the left or right with n independent random steps will, on the average, end up about √n steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to n. In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a career with a vision will get you a distance proportional to n, while no vision will get you only the distance √n. In a sense, the main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and the others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen.
One of the main tasks of this course is to start you on the path of creating in some detail your vision of your future. If I fail in this I fail in the whole course. You will probably object that if you try to get a vision now it is likely to be wrong—and my reply is from observation I have seen the accuracy of the vision matters less than you might suppose, getting anywhere is better than drifting, there are potentially many paths to greatness for you, and just which path you go on, so long as it takes you to greatness, is none of my business. You must, as in the case of forging your personal style, find your vision of your future career, and then follow it as best you can. No vision, not much of a future.
Hamming Questions are core to some exercises in CFAR workshops. Personally, I’ve never been motivated by setting goals. Once they are fixed, the removal of exploration and the single mindedness of optimization are fatal to sustaining my interest. I don’t know if CFAR has ever clicked into the resistance that comes up when people are confronted with the question of what is the work of greatest significance that one could possibly do. At least in my dissertation research, I found people were more reluctant to set goals for the things that most mattered to them. My interpretation was that it was a way to evade the possibility of discovering you’ve failed at something really meaningful. This was called “The Delmore Effect”, as it was robustly observed that people had explicit and well-structured goals for lower priority ambitions, but less articulate, more sketchy ideas for pursuing the activities most important to their identity
Richard Hamming:
I’m curious, what course is this from?
https://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming_1997_-_The_Art_of_Doing_Science_and_Engineering.pdf#page=16
Found this on gwern.net/on-really-trying
Hamming Questions are core to some exercises in CFAR workshops.
Personally, I’ve never been motivated by setting goals. Once they are fixed, the removal of exploration and the single mindedness of optimization are fatal to sustaining my interest.
I don’t know if CFAR has ever clicked into the resistance that comes up when people are confronted with the question of what is the work of greatest significance that one could possibly do.
At least in my dissertation research, I found people were more reluctant to set goals for the things that most mattered to them. My interpretation was that it was a way to evade the possibility of discovering you’ve failed at something really meaningful. This was called “The Delmore Effect”, as it was robustly observed that people had explicit and well-structured goals for lower priority ambitions, but less articulate, more sketchy ideas for pursuing the activities most important to their identity